Daughter kept her mum’s care cash

Falkirk Sheriff Court.

A daughter withdrew £6000 from her mother’s account and kept it for herself instead of paying nursing home costs.

Margaret Kerr (47), 30 South Philpingstone Lane, Bo’ness, began taking money from her mother’s account after she was put in charge of the elderly woman’s finances.

Despite using some of the cash to cover some of her mother’s expenses, she admitted using the money for herself and her family and also failing to make any contribution to the costs when her mother was placed in a care home.

Kerr pled guilty at Falkirk Sheriff Court to stealing £6000 by making withdrawals from The Post Office, East Pier Street, Bo’ness, between June 2012 and May 2013.

Procurator fiscal depute Lorna Harris said: ‘‘A meeting was held between Falkirk Council social work, the accused and Mrs Kerr where it was stated she would require a substantial amount of care when she was discharged from hospital.

“The accused was to oversee Mrs Kerr’s finances and it was agreed the fees for the care home would come directly from Mrs Kerr’s account.

‘‘It was later discovered no fees had been paid and no personal allowance given to Mrs Kerr while she was within the care home.”

Police were contacted after it was noted Kerr had made withdrawals from her mother’s account.

Kerr said she had received no bills or demand for costs from the care home.

Murray Aitken, defence solicitor, said: “Clearly she benefited to some degree because not all the money was spent on her mother but on her and her family to no lavish extent. She is genuinely upset and remorseful.”

Kerr’s mother died in December last year.

Sheriff William Gallacher said: “This was a significant amount of money which should have been used for other things and instead you benefited from it.”

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

Linlithgow Journal and Gazette provides news, events and sport features from the Linlithgow area. For the best up to date information relating to Linlithgow and the surrounding areas visit us at Linlithgow Journal and Gazette regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website Linlithgow Journal and Gazette requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.